As today marks your first official day at the helm of Linden Lab, I’d like to formally welcome you to the hot seat and wish you every success!
Thanks to Twitter, you’ve already seen that we’re a pretty passionate bunch – which can be good and bad when it comes to company / user relations, as you’ve no doubt experienced in the past!
I’m not about to offer-up sage (or otherwise!) advice on what needs to be done with regards to “fix” Second Life and its direction. You’ll be aware of what the board is seeking, and I appreciate you need time to gain familiarity with everything that is going on at the Lab and with its partners in terms of products and services before determining courses of action. However, I would like to say a little something, if that’s OK?
Through those Twitter messages, you’ve likely also already caught-on to the fact that company / user community communications are a concern to many.
Truth be told, there are areas within the Lab – most notably within the technical teams managing the servers and the viewer – where communications are excellent, and the people responsible deserve thanks and recognition. However, over the years, broader communications have been left to wither on the vine. This has led to frustrations, upsets and misunderstandings which could so easily have been avoided with a positive, outward communications policy. So, with this in mind, I’d like to encourage you to:
Encourage the board to see broader outward communications as a positive thing which helps both company and users
Get a team together who can drive positive outward communications through the SL blogs, the forums and e-mail in a consistent, open, and informative manner – and who can listen as well!
We don’t need to know absolutely everything that’s going on, but even a monthly round-up of news is better than prolonged (and painful) silences which have been the hallmark of the Lab’s attempts for the past few years. And if folks in the Lab tell you the blog isn’t used because no-one reads it; then rest assured, if posts are provided, and Twitter, Facebook, Plurk and the SL feed, etc., are used to promote them, people will come and read. The same goes for an e-mail newsletter (and how better to reach and woo those who have perhaps stopped visiting SL?).
We’re a supportive bunch at heart, and we want SL to continue to thrive and grow. Just give us the word, and we’ll be ready to help. We might even have a few ideas to help with some things; we just need to know someone is listening!
Looking forward to seeing you in-world on occasion – and if you want a guide to some of SL’s wonders, feel free to give me a call!
Best regards,
Inara
… and as I know you enjoy Formula 1, here’s a Ferrari (sorry, couldn’t find a Merc or McLaren) from 2010, by SL user Timmi Allen
Ebbe Altberg at Yahoo! circa 2008 (image courtesy of LaFlecha)
Update: February 20th: I was fortunate to attend a meet-and-greet with Ebbe Altberg in-world, and have published an article presenting his views on the Lab, You can read and listen to his comments by following this link.
So Ebbe Altberg is the new CEO at Linden Lab, and will formally take up his new position on Monday February 10th. But who is Ebbe Altberg?
You can read his official LL biography here, and I’m using that as a leaping-off point for a slightly deeper look at his career.
Mr. Altberg, Swedish by birth, graduated fromTärnabySkidhem in 1983. This is categorised as a “general college / university” in Foursquare, but appears to (also?) be a ski school.
Tärnaby itself is a locality (“urban area”) situated in Storuman Municipality, Västerbotten County, northern Sweden. It is noted for being the home of several of the country’s top international skiers and is regarded as one of the country’s best ski resorts.
Following this, he attended Middlebury College, Vermont, USA, where he graduated with a BA (subject not clear). Founded in 1800, Middlebury is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges in the United States, and offers 44 majors in the arts, humanities, literature, foreign languages, social sciences, and natural sciences.
After eleven and a half years as Product Unit Manager at Microsoft, where he was involved in products such as Word, Office, Mac Office, and multimedia products, he moved on to Internet and Telecommunications company Ingenio in March 2000. Here he was responsible for managing the engineering, program management, operations, and quality teams. Interestingly, and as noted in the LL bio, he also served as the company’s interim CEO.
Joining Yahoo! in February 2008, he spent two years and nine months working as Vice President, Head of Audience for the company’s EMEA division, based in Rolle, Switzerland. Here he was responsible for consumer strategy, products and content throughout EMEA, including Search, Mail, Homepage, Media products, including News, Sports, Finance, Music, Movies, Autos, Travel, Games, Answers, Flickr etc. He ultimately managed all teams responsible for product management, design, editorial, programming, content, production, content business development and product marketing – some 180 people in total across six countries.
During this period, he also served on the board of Yahoo! SARL (Société à responsabilité limitée) – think the equivalent of a Pvt Ltd company in the UK or a limited liability partnership in the USA.
In October 2010, Mr. Altberg became the Senior Vice President for Media Engineering at Yahoo! with global responsibly for Media Engineering for all of Yahoo! Homepages, News, Sports, Finance, Movies, Music, TV, Games, OMG, Lifestyles, Weather, Screen, Livestand and IntoNow products, including related partner portals, publishing platforms and the Yahoo! Contributor Network, across all devices (PC, Tablet and Mobile). This position involved managing an organisation of more than 600 engineers, architects, program managers and quality engineering staff, as well as having dotted-line oversight of some 150 product managers and designers.
Ebbe Altberg joined BranchOut as the company sought to pivot its ailing Facebook app, resulting in the launch of Talk.co
Thirteen months later, in October 2012, he moved to join BranchOut, based in San Francisco, as Chief Operations Officer. At the time of his joining, the company had already experienced something of a rough time.
Founded in 2010 by Rick Marini as an application designed for finding jobs, networking professionally, and recruiting employees, it proclaimed itself to be the “largest professional network on Facebook”.
The app attracted some $49 million in three rounds of funding between 2010 and 2012, and in March 2012 it boasted some 25 million users and was active in at least 60 countries. However, by August of that year, user numbers had fallen to some 3 million, and the company had indicated it would be working to pivot BranchOut into a workplace chat app, As COO, Mr. Altberg played a key role in this effort, which saw the development of Talk.co, a private messaging application. Launched in October 2013, Talk.co promotes itself as “a better way to communicate with those you work with”.
Mr. Altberg defines his key skills as:
Specialties: Team development, strategy, provide vision, software and business inventions, product design, engineering, product/program management, quality engineering, operations.
Manage teams that invent, create, define, spec, build, produce, test, ship, market and operate products.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Altberg is a keen supporter of his son’s racing and driving career with APR Motorsport and elsewhere (image courtesy of Talk.co)
Away from work, Mr. Altberg appears to have an interest in space exploration, particularly efforts from within the private sector. He’s also a follower of Formula 1 racing, and (obviously) a keen supporter of his son, Aleks, a former instructor at the Dirtfish Rally School and who is currently an instructor at the Lamborghini Driving Academy, as well as being a winning driver with APR Motorsport.
From his résumé, it’s fairly clear why Ebbe Altberg has been seen as a good fit for Linden Lab by the board of directors. He has considerable breadth and depth of experience in both product development and product management, as well as in multi-discipline team management and developing and operating software across multiple platforms and product categories.
A lot of Mr. Altberg’s background revolves around social media and the need to establish strong communities. Indeed, his lists his motivating factors as creating “fantastic and profitable experiences that positively impact millions of people.” This might actually bode well for Second Life, particularly if he has the freedom to ensure the company more broadly re-engages with the SL user base, and becomes more pro-active in key areas of communication (such as with changes to the ToS and better communications about legal and requirements which impact users, etc.). He has already received a number of Tweets from SL users (myself included) requesting he takes this into consideration while welcoming him to the company.
Time will obviously tell as to how well Mr. Altberg fits-in at Linden Lab, as well as revealing the direction in which the board would like him to take the company.; in this respect it is perhaps interesting to note how the press release announcing his appointment is directly focused on Second Life and Blocksworld (with a mention in passing of Desura). In the meantime, I’ll once again welcome him to Linden Lab. The hot seat awaits!
Peter Gray has just informed me that on Wednesday February 5th, the board of directors of Linden Lab formally announced the appointment of Ebbe Altberg as the company’s Chief Executive Officer.
The press release announcing his appointment reads in part:
SAN FRANCISCO — February 5, 2014 —Linden Lab®, the makers of Second Life®, BlocksworldTM, DesuraTM, and more, today announced that Ebbe Altberg will lead the company as its new Chief Executive Officer.
Ebbe Altberg (image courtesy of Linden Lab)
“We remain committed to world-changing innovation from Linden Lab,” said Jed Smith of the company’s Board of Directors. “We’re keenly focused on providing incredible experiences for all of our customers, and Ebbe is the perfect person to help lead our team as we continue to serve and grow our global audience of active users.”
“Linden Lab has long been at the forefront of building experiences that entertain people while empowering them to express themselves and profit from their creations,” said Altberg. “Our customers’ creativity is unparalleled, and I’m proud to join the talented team that serves them. Second Life is now in its eleventh year, and every day, users continue to create more and more amazing experiences to enjoy. Though much younger, Blocksworld has already seen hundreds of thousands of unique user-created worlds shared for everyone to play with. I’m absolutely committed to supporting our customers and helping them become even more successful. There are significant opportunities ahead, and I look forward to leading us into the next phase of growth.”
The appointment brings to an end almost two weeks of silence on the matter of the CEO position, following Rod Humble’s surprise announcement that he had departed the company, which was made via his Facebook account, and the news broken by Jo Yardley on January 24th, 2014.
Collins Land, September 2013
Crystal Oak Falls, December 2013
Black Basalt Beach, August 2013
Calas Galadhon Park, December 2013
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 